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Saturday, May 4, 2013

More opinions about education

I have been actually working. Driving around in circles in a tractor.
My wife has been getting ready for her school's fundraising auction which is today.
I've been thinking about the local school board election.
I compared the facebook pages of the two candidates that are actually running against each other. It is quite interesting. It pretty much shows the cultural divide in this country.
One candidate has friends who go hunting, ride ATV's, are firefighters, or they build things or they are farmers, or a similar industry.
The other candidate has friends that are mostly in the education industry.
It is also interesting where the campaign signs are placed.
This is not to say that Trish S. is not a nice person or an effective school board member, however, I distrust the teacher's union. I am suspicious of any change in the school system. Change never seems to improve anything.
I have observed that the school board is the only thing keeping the school district from spending lots of money.
I have observed that teaching is a bit of a racket.
They all congratulate themselves on doing it all "for the children," but it can be a pretty easy job. Once you develop your lesson plans you could pretty much go on auto-pilot for the next decade or so.
You get a full years salary for part of a year's worth of work. Sure you have to work on improving education skills and go to seminars and stuff-or at least my wife does, but it is more annoying than difficult. Sometimes it is actually fun.
My wife doesn't get paid very well and her insurance and retirement is pretty much a joke, but she teaches at a private school. The people I know who teach in the public schools get paid a little better.
If you are a good teacher and you work at providing fresh and interesting material for your students then you do work hard. But, you do this by choice.
School administrators are always overpaid and promoted past their level of competence.
The bottom line with the public school is that there is no connection between the money you pay in taxes and what happens in your kid's education.
You have to pay twice to exercise your rights as a consumer and put your kid in a private school.
I have more opinions but I'm going to work.